Ravenna’s mosaics started a craze that’s gone national in the U.S.
On Thursday I wrote about mosaics -- not the best-known medium for art -- and not any old mosaics but the ones in Ravenna in Emilia-Romagna, a hefty region in Italy wedged among Tuscany, Lombardy, the Veneto, and the Marche. From the tomb of Galla Placidia, the last of the Roman Empire’s femme fatales and premier intriguers, to Sant’Apollinare Nuovo and San Vitale -- a scant 150 years or so -- we see the end of Roman naturalism in art and the flower of Byzantium’s flat abstraction. It’s an evolution not only in style but in substance. Divinities no longer ...
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